Bag of holding change: Copyloth

[Midaychi]

 

As far as I can tell, that ridiculous D&D reference (that even dnd has abandoned because I'm pretty sure now it sucks everyone into the celestial plane) is only good for ending rounds. Even the explosion of getting rid of the results of a baguloth with a third bag is gonna at least make the captain hammer the shuttle button.

 

(edit: Due to not having been on paradise in a while, it's possible this functionality no longer exists. The following suggestion still stands, however.)

 

So, I propose an alternative: Copyloth.

 

Per this suggestion, putting a BOH into another BOH would spawn a swirly mysterious portal, possibly green in nature.

 

The first thing that enters this portal gets copied, and then the portal dissipates.

 

Ostensibly, you're just forming bluespace stuff into normal world stuff, so it's made of bluespace goop or handwavium or whatever.

 

The catch is that it'd only be copied and not any unnecessary contents.

 

Throw an esword in, get two eswords. Move a mech in, get a second mech without modules or a pilot. Throw the clown in, get a naked ghostless clown back. Throw your uplink pda in and get a second uplink pda without telecrystals or a cart.

 

Throw another BOH in, however, and you summon a random anomaly instead. Pyroclastic, Gravitational, Bluespace, etc.

 

 

I figure if you have the research and materials to waste on two bags of holdings, you either did A REALLY GOOD JOB AND DESERVE IT, or it's late enough in the round not to matter.

 

That, and you have to get your hands on something/someone first to duplicate it/them.

 

___

 

Additional possible ideas:

 

1. There could be a % chance of something hilarious or horrifying or unexpected happening instead or in addition to, to make this more than a copy machine. Getting a rubber ducky instead of an emag. Have the copy clown possessed by an evil spirit. Cause a massive EMP. Summon Cuban Pete. Etc.

 

2. If you somehow get a Copyloth to eat another Copyloth, it could spawn a mysterious permanent portal, which would give you an excuse to have a new themed or randomized zlevel to explore.

 

[Spacemanspark]

 

Ehhhhhh this seems too abusable.

That and I like Mr. Singuloth.

 

[Surrealistik]

Almost anything is better than Singuloth griefing with a stupid and unnecessary DnD reference.

[FalseIncarnate]

 

Spawning a BoH singularity is generally considered grief and is bannable for such reason. There are a few valid uses for it that will not result in banning, which this suggestion utterly removes. And yes, occasionally it happens on accident, though such occurrences are rare, almost never repeated, and still have some sort of punishment to ensure the lesson is learned.

 

The reference is a long-standing one, and one present on most (if not all) of the major codebases. We did have the functionality removed for a while, and then returned it (I don't know all of the details regarding either event, just that they happened). While not everyone may like it, the reference is there for the same reason as the original mechanic being referenced: To avoid recursively-infinite storage and punish people who would attempt to exploit a system.

 

Your suggestion also seems to be potentially abusable, even with the chance of mayhem. There are some items that shouldn't be duplicate-possible, and some that (while duplicating would be possible) shouldn't exist in larger numbers without significantly larger effort than tossing them into a green portal.

 

Examples: Supermatter crystals, Xenoarch Artifacts, Hand-tele, most mechs (specifically things like a Phazon or HONKmech), Bulma Briefs, high-cost traitor items (they are high cost specifically to limit their availability), traitor-objective items (such as the CE's magboots, captain's gun, nuke disc, etc), slime cores, high-end materials (diamonds, uranium, etc), and so forth.

 

While bag of holding singularities are destructive and incredibly powerful, they are typically not a common sight (except during christmas, that was a bad time) and I personally see no need to remove this function.

 

[Surrealistik]

 

It's not there to prevent infinite recursion of storage; it's easy enough to guard against that without featuring an eminently exploitable and griefable mechanic, let's at least be honest about that. It's there as a stupid reference, and, as a rationalization tacked on in afterthought that has nothing to do with the real reason for its initial implementation which is exclusively that reference, so some asshole antags can indiscriminately and permanently kill a bunch of people and end a round with casual ease.

 

Anyways, this debate has already been had.

 

[necaladun]

Yeah that's a lot of coding work to change something that isn't a problem and is an ss13 trope (Sam wileys sound files attest to that) and a d&d thing. Copying stuff has a lot of bug potential too and snowflake code needed, whether it's mobs, the disc, etc.

[Midaychi]

 

derp.

 

I mean, cool you don't want it. Neat.

I wasn't going to reply to anything in this thread, and was just going to leave this as a suggestion, until I saw this post.

 

I had to reply because I was WTFing so hard.

 

Did you seriously just basically post, "We have a gimmick that we need to keep so that we can teach people not to be clever by allowing us an excuse to ban them." ?

 

Also that second part, one word fix. "Blacklist"

 

Anyways bye.

 

[Fox McCloud]

http://sam.wileycomputerworks.com/SS13/Lord_Sing.wav

[necaladun]

It's not an excuse to ban people, if it's an honest mistake the punishment is getting eaten by a sing.

[FalseIncarnate]

 

It's not there to prevent infinite recursion of storage

 

I believe there was a bit of misunderstanding on my phrasing (and looking back at it, I can understand the misunderstanding and apologize for my phrasing).

 

I didn't mean that the mechanic in SS13 was meant to punish people. The original mechanic from D&D (which is what the SS13 mechanic references) was what I meant as being in place to punish people for trying to break the game via recursively-infinite storage. Given that a bag of holding would always weigh the same regardless of contents, it was possible to carry an entire continent worth of loot without ever increasing your load beyond the first bag (thus circumventing encumbrance). Thus, the black-hole mechanic was implemented, more as a deterrent than an actual punishment. You typically don't do anything you are told is going to kill you unless you are gonna die regardless of doing it or not.

 

Did you seriously just basically post, "We have a gimmick that we need to keep so that we can teach people not to be clever by allowing us an excuse to ban them." ?

 

If that's how it came across, that was not the intent. As neca mentioned, we rarely ban people who do this as an honest mistake (and usually if we do ban them, it's for their attitude in response to the admin PM or other reasons than the bags). We DO ban people who do it intentionally and without a valid reason for doing so.

 

As for your bit about cleverness, we do encourage players to be clever. However, there are still limitations on what is and is not allowed within a purely mechanical confines, and recursive storage has been known to cause problems, especially with things like locations and objectives. Being clever does not always equate to exploiting a loophole or bug, and preventative measures to avoid said loopholes encourage the player to be clever by devising some other means to their end.

 

[Surrealistik]

 

It's not there to prevent infinite recursion of storage

 

I believe there was a bit of misunderstanding on my phrasing (and looking back at it, I can understand the misunderstanding and apologize for my phrasing).

 

I didn't mean that the mechanic in SS13 was meant to punish people. The original mechanic from D&D (which is what the SS13 mechanic references) was what I meant as being in place to punish people for trying to break the game via recursively-infinite storage. Given that a bag of holding would always weigh the same regardless of contents, it was possible to carry an entire continent worth of loot without ever increasing your load beyond the first bag (thus circumventing encumbrance). Thus, the black-hole mechanic was implemented, more as a deterrent than an actual punishment. You typically don't do anything you are told is going to kill you unless you are gonna die regardless of doing it or not.

 

C'mon man, this is just not true.

 

It's there as a reference, that's it; there are countless ways to code out this sort of recursion that don't involve creating a grief-fest singu. Why is punishing or deterrence even necessary? Just prevent the recursion from even being possible in the first place.

 

[Spacemanspark]

 

Because it's fun and we like fun.

...Allegedly.

We aren't Hugbox station 13.

 

[davidchan]

 

-1. This just sounds like an exploit for infinite diamonds waiting to happen, let alone stuff like a box full of bombs or other bad ideas.

 

As for the hate against singulo creation, I don't get it. The reference is old as dirt and makes sense (putting extradimensional space in extradimensional space.) And it serves to urge caution in players to prevent abuse and wreckless behavior with powerful and poorly understood items.

 

Singulo bag abuse is pretty rare, I've seen it once or twice on the station and the other times its always been during the end of round ffa. BoH needs diamonds and diamonds rely on RNJesus to get any quantity of them. Hell, in the last month of playing alone I only ever saw diamonds in stock because I mined them myself, the miners almost always get lost, go SSD or cargo goes full retard and exports anything mining brings back to centcomm.

 

In terms of grief, this is a rare and seldom used tactic, made all the more obvious because the player needs to drag or carry the second bag, or steal one from someone else. Both of which can be seen a mile away and dealt with. I'm far more afraid of toxin bombers or baldie science unleashing their new hellmix and gib smoke. BoHs just require too many chips to fall in exactly the right place its basically a special event for it to even be possible.

 

[PPI]

it's also a good way to stop singularites, nar'sie, shadowlings, wizards, or for starting a singularity without a wormhole generator.

[tigercat2000]

 

It's not there to prevent infinite recursion of storage

 

I believe there was a bit of misunderstanding on my phrasing (and looking back at it, I can understand the misunderstanding and apologize for my phrasing).

 

I didn't mean that the mechanic in SS13 was meant to punish people. The original mechanic from D&D (which is what the SS13 mechanic references) was what I meant as being in place to punish people for trying to break the game via recursively-infinite storage. Given that a bag of holding would always weigh the same regardless of contents, it was possible to carry an entire continent worth of loot without ever increasing your load beyond the first bag (thus circumventing encumbrance). Thus, the black-hole mechanic was implemented, more as a deterrent than an actual punishment. You typically don't do anything you are told is going to kill you unless you are gonna die regardless of doing it or not.

 

C'mon man, this is just not true.

 

It's there as a reference, that's it; there are countless ways to code out this sort of recursion that don't involve creating a grief-fest singu. Why is punishing or deterrence even necessary? Just prevent the recursion from even being possible in the first place.

 

He just explained what he meant- no, it's not to prevent recursion in SS13. It was, however, made specifically to prevent recursion in D&D, which the item is a reference to.

 

[Surrealistik]

 

He just explained what he meant- no, it's not to prevent recursion in SS13. It was, however, made specifically to prevent recursion in D&D, which the item is a reference to.

 

Thus, the black-hole mechanic was implemented, more as a deterrent than an actual punishment. You typically don't do anything you are told is going to kill you unless you are gonna die regardless of doing it or not.

 

Again, it was not implemented as a deterrent; the mechanic's implementation has nothing to do with deterrence, everything to do with a DnD reference. Full stop. Period.

 

[Fox McCloud]

 

Sorry, this just isn't going to happen.

 

It's something deeply ingrained in SS13 culture; it's one of the rarest grief methods we come across since it literally requires science and mining to do their jobs and someone willing to stick around for that long to see the grief through (not to mention that it's fairly easy to delete a singularity created by it and have minimal damage incurred because of such)--toxin bombs and fuel tank explosions are wayyy more grief prone and destructive than this. These hardly ever show up until about 45-75 minutes into the game..it's nto like they can be made at round start and spammed to no end.

 

 

Secondly, it has plenty of legit purposes; forcing a shuttle call, setting up an alternate way of spawning in a singularity for use with your singularity beacon; attempting to kill literally every last person on the shuttle because you got hijack, killing the AI, killing a blob, etc.

 

Also, this:

 

Because it's fun and we like fun.

...Allegedly.

We aren't Hugbox station 13.

 

[Surrealistik]

 

(not to mention that it's fairly easy to delete a singularity created by it and have minimal damage incurred because of such)--toxin bombs and fuel tank explosions are wayyy more grief prone and destructive than this.

 

Toxin bombs and fuel tank explosions aren't nearly as destructive; hell even traditional singularity sabotage isn't nearly as destructive because this gives you complete control over singu placement.

 

Further, I've yet to see an admin delete a singularity created with this before it caused _massive_ round ending damage.

 

An incentivized new mining means that pulling this off in a timely manner will probably be easier and faster than ever as mining is really the only bottleneck for a Sci griefer; any remotely competent/experienced player can get the requisite research done in well under 20 minutes comfortably.

 

Lastly, antagonistic singu placement is really only fun for the user, and is precisely the opposite for its victims.

 

[Fox McCloud]

 

Toxin bombs and fuel tank explosions aren't nearly as destructive; hell even traditional singularity sabotage isn't nearly as destructive because this gives you complete control over singu placement.

 

Um, no. Singularity gets released->admin deletes it->something on the order of less than 100 titles get destroyed

 

Toxin bombs go off; there's nothing you can do to stop them once they do; suddenly hundreds of tiles are destroyed or damaged, often times (by griefers) in multiple locations; it's a lot harder for the crew to deal with and occurs wayyyy more frequently than the 6-8ish incidents of BoH grief in all of Para history, and 3/4 of those grief issues all occurred in the same month:December (due to Christmas presents having them).

 

Further, I've yet to see an admin delete a singularity created with this before it caused _massive_ round ending damage.

 

As someone who gets to see more of the action with a broader lens than most of the players, a lot of singularities are deleted before they cause insane levels of destruction; not everything gets caught every time for everything--that's not an excuse to get rid of it (and this goes with all forms of grief/abuse), but the fact of the matter is, a lot of singulo issues are dealt with before they end the station.

 

An incentivized new mining means that pulling this off in a timely manner will probably be easier and faster than ever as mining is really the only bottleneck for a Sci griefer; any remotely competent/experienced player can get the requisite research done in well under 20 minutes comfortably.

 

Even if we assume you're correct here (which I'm not, FYI), this is still way more effort to grief than toxins bombs...likewise on the matter of incentivized mining: it's not going to suddenly make minerals more abundant--even with miners who currently do their job, diamonds are a fairly hard to find thing that tends to not show up until much later in the round--incentivizing miners to do their jobs isn't going to magically change the time that scientists get their diamonds--it's just *potentially* going to see that minerals are delivered more often on a round to round basis.

 

Lastly, antagonistic singu placement is really only fun for the user, and is precisely the opposite for its victims.

 

So is getting eaten hypnotize by a vamp, stunned by an emagged beepsky, a well placed toxin bomb, Nuke Ops bum-rushing the bridge, eswords, ebows, etc. none of these things are particularly "fun" for the victims, and most have little to no overall counter on a player by player basis (overall game mode is a different story). It's inherently part of SS13; if you don't like that, then I strongly recommend playing on an extended server where you won't have to worry about these things.

 

[FalseIncarnate]

 

Thus, the black-hole mechanic was implemented, more as a deterrent than an actual punishment. You typically don't do anything you are told is going to kill you unless you are gonna die regardless of doing it or not.

 

Again, it was not implemented as a deterrent; the mechanic's implementation has nothing to do with deterrence, everything to do with a DnD reference. Full stop. Period.

 

Again, I was speaking purely about the D&D mechanics here. Wizards of the Coast (or whoever owned the rights to D&D when that was actually put into effect) put that mechanic in on their game as a deterrent, not us.

 

Now, to avoid you further being confused so easily by which system I'm currently referring to, let me clearly state that I am now talking about Space Station 13:

 

We never declared the singularity spawning as a deterrent, because it wasn't intended as a deterrent in SS13. It was purely a reference to a rather well-known mechanic from another game system that was able to be applied in this game system in a nearly-identical manner as the original material. We did not code it, it has been something in the codebases since r4407 or earlier, so it's initial inclusion was not simply a case of one of our coders saying "hey, i want to reference this", nor was that the case with it's re-inclusion. It was re-included because it was an interesting mechanic that served valid purposes in the right hands/situation.

 

[Surrealistik]

 

@ FalseIncarnate: I'm not confused. You were talking about a black-hole mechanic as a deterrent. In DnD it's not a blackhole, it's an Astral Plane portal so I concluded you were referring to SS13.

 

 

Um, no. Singularity gets released->admin deletes it->something on the order of less than 100 titles get destroyed

 

Toxin bombs go off; there's nothing you can do to stop them once they do; suddenly hundreds of tiles are destroyed or damaged, often times (by griefers) in multiple locations; it's a lot harder for the crew to deal with and occurs wayyyy more frequently than the 6-8ish incidents of BoH grief in all of Para history, and 3/4 of those grief issues all occurred in the same month:December (due to Christmas presents having them).

 

As someone who gets to see more of the action with a broader lens than most of the players, a lot of singularities are deleted before they cause insane levels of destruction; not everything gets caught every time for everything--that's not an excuse to get rid of it (and this goes with all forms of grief/abuse), but the fact of the matter is, a lot of singulo issues are dealt with before they end the station.

 

I'm pretty sure a lot of selective memory is involved here; also aren't there bomb caps that prevent hundreds of tiles of destruction from occurring via toxins? Building, placing and detonating multiple toxin bombs definitely features more risk than minting a couple of BoHs and is certainly much harder to pull off successfully than slamming them together.

 

Even if we assume you're correct here (which I'm not, FYI), this is still way more effort to grief than toxins bombs...likewise on the matter of incentivized mining: it's not going to suddenly make minerals more abundant--even with miners who currently do their job, diamonds are a fairly hard to find thing that tends to not show up until much later in the round--incentivizing miners to do their jobs isn't going to magically change the time that scientists get their diamonds--it's just *potentially* going to see that minerals are delivered more often on a round to round basis.

 

Under 20 minutes is actually pretty conservative in terms of research completion; you finish the research and wait for mining to drop in; if there's a window of time until you get your shit, go ahead and synthesize a bunch of killchems, or even toxinbombs if you feel like taking a chance you might draw attention to yourself. Speaking of, to create and place multiple toxin bombs in order to circumvent the limits imposed by bomb caps is both potentially more time consuming and has a much higher risk of getting caught (significant as opposed to none). That's one of the biggest comparative problems with Singu griefing; not only is it immensely destructive, it is also pretty much impossible to detect, intercept and stop.

 

Further, yes, incentivizing mining is _definitely_ going to reduce the time until scientists get their diamonds on average; there's absolutely nothing 'magical' about it. If miners are encouraged to do their job, they are more likely to do it, and therefore more likely to get diamonds and do so more quickly.

 

So is getting eaten hypnotize by a vamp, stunned by an emagged beepsky, a well placed toxin bomb, Nuke Ops bum-rushing the bridge, eswords, ebows, etc. none of these things are particularly "fun" for the victims, and most have little to no overall counter on a player by player basis (overall game mode is a different story). It's inherently part of SS13; if you don't like that, then I strongly recommend playing on an extended server where you won't have to worry about these things.

 

In all of these cases, there are either answers, responses and counters or ways to otherwise prevent or minimize the averse outcome, or the harm is limited in scope (as in the case of getting vamp jumped) as opposed to being wholesale destruction that literally comes out of nowhere without any warning whatsoever. Fighting back against Nuke Ops is fun. Meanwhile, you can literally do nothing to stop singugrief via BoH; it is balanced solely by admins, which means it's not balanced.

 

[FalseIncarnate]

 

@ FalseIncarnate: I'm not confused. You were talking about a black-hole mechanic as a deterrent. In DnD it's not a blackhole, it's an Astral Plane portal so I concluded you were referring to SS13.

 

Apologies, it's been a bit since I've messed with D&D, so I mixed up the whole astral plane bit. It's still in effect a black hole, since anything that enters it is rarely going to return (given that rifts tend to be rather unpredicatable in where they deposit you and typically won't remain open as a two-way transport for long if at all).

 

But yes, I technically was wrong in my phrasing by saying "black hole" rather than "rift to the astral plane".

 

[BiberDark]

Let it create a portal to the beach. I love the beach and its sound.

[Earthdivine]

Can we drop that subject of a reference because the reference itself is completely wrong? Putting a bag of holding in a bag of holding only invalidates the inner bags magic, causing it to be a normal bag. It's when you use a bag of holding with a PORTABLE HOLE that the rift to the astral plane happens.

[davidchan]

 

Can we drop that subject of a reference because the reference itself is completely wrong? Putting a bag of holding in a bag of holding only invalidates the inner bags magic, causing it to be a normal bag. It's when you use a bag of holding with a PORTABLE HOLE that the rift to the astral plane happens.

 

Actually that was a 3.0 change. AD&D and First Edition, attempting put any extra-dimensional spaces in each other had very bad and often destructive results.